


Three Sentences of Interest

by Dien



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: 3 Sentence Fiction, AU, Challenges, F/F, F/M, Flash Fic, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:17:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 4,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dien/pseuds/Dien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bunch of unconnected shorts that started life as three-sentence fics over on Tumblr. Most of them are not three sentences. Multiple pairings, multiple characters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One - Zoe and Harold

Prim and proper, stiff back and stiff courtesies; Zoe’s known too many men like that to fall for it. There’ll be something that pushes his buttons— something that makes his eyes light up and animates him and turns him into a chatterbox— there always is, with smart people.  
  
She’s a little disappointed it turns out to be something as predictable as books. _Live the geek stereotype a little harder, why don’t you_ , she thinks, but not with any malice; he’s sweet in a way, just wind him up and let him go and she remembers just enough of college courses on Emily Dickinson to hold her own.  
  
It’s not until later she realizes he pulled one over on her (on _her_ ). Not that he was feigning the book-love, just that that’s not what _really_ does it for him. No.   
  
What really animates quiet Mr. Finch— she discovers when she pulls off her stockings, slow—   
  
—she discovers when touching herself at his soft but definite suggestion, fingers drifting between her legs and over the curve of her breast—  
  
—she discovers when he asks, very politely, if he can tape this—  
  
—she discovers when watching his eyes fixated on her like a heat-seeking missile, with an intensity that makes her catch her lower lip in her teeth—  
  
—what really animates him is _watching_.


	2. Two - Harold and Nathan

He’d told the clerk at the liquor store he wanted something potent, no, really, I mean potent— and the bottle sloshes, a fifth of accusation, in his coat pocket as he climbs the stairs to Nathan’s apartment.

Harold tells himself it’s for himself— for his own nerves, his own unease and shaky fingers and inhibitions and awkward butterflies— tells himself this lie with every step, even knowing that he’d chosen this brand out of the whiskeys the clerk had suggested because he knew Nathan favored it.

He pours until Nathan’s smiling and sloppy and boneless on the couch, until Nathan doesn’t object to his sinking to his knees before him, until all Nathan does is run clumsy fingers through his hair and breathe his name from great and whiskey-scented heights.


	3. Three - Harold and John

The man calling himself John Reese cleans up extraordinarily well, Finch thinks when he gets his first glimpse of the man who _will_ be his employee— drunk onto a stupor on the bed, but clean-shaven now— after their first disastrous meeting.

Stupor or not, he doesn’t trust Reese’s unconsciousness enough to risk his own skin, so he has Davis and Brown drug him to be sure, arrange transport (not like he could have lugged that dead weight anyway), secure him with the ziptie and check his vitals before he dismisses them.

He stands there a long moment by the bed, regarding John Reese, thinking for the first time in months (years?) about something other than Numbers, Numbers, Numbers— thinking instead about the curve of a powerful body beneath a plain white t-shirt, about the exposed pale skin on Reese’s throat with his head thrown back in oblivion— thinking about things that are almost alien after so long; and thinking that it’s strange what treasures you can find discarded in the world’s lost and found.


	4. Five - Harold and John and Things that Tick and Click

It’s easiest to run diagnostics when Reese is unconscious, of course, which creates an awkward paradox: he certainly doesn’t want to expose Reese to _more_ harm than is necessary, but he does still need to do maintenance every now and then, and it turns out that creating an AI is the relatively ( _relatively)_ easy part and keeping the AI in the dark as to its own nature is considerably harder, especially when you designed it with a certain base parameter of inquisitiveness, self-preservation, and vigilance.

So he takes his opportunities when he can— when Reese is shot or cut, when he can use Reese’s exhaustion or injuries as a believable reason Reese would pass out that has nothing to do with the drugs he slips him, and then while his most remarkable creation sleeps he runs the scanner over a body that is, yes, mostly flesh and blood.

Sometimes— very rarely— he wonders what the original John might have thought of his body having been repurposed for such means, if the original and not-terribly-remarkable Army sergeant would have given his permission for his still-breathing but brain-dead body to be wheeled from the coma ward at Walter Reed to a clinic that exists on no map, for the surgeons to open up his skull and start attaching very delicate wires, and microchips with a whole new self written in subatomic script— like the golem of Jewish myth, clay given purpose by magic and holy words— except that Finch has never been content merely playing _priest…._ and what the original John might and might not have given permission to do is meaningless compared with the needs that Finch perceives.


	5. Six - John and a Ghost

The view of New York from the tower was one of his favorite things: the city’s avenues and rooftops spread out below, the streets like arteries of light and life, all the people carried along in a rush of sound and motion only occasionally interrupted by the whisper or cry of _Look— up in the sky…_

From here he could see— so much, so many details fed into the HUD of the suit (heartbeats and infrared)— and hear (a hundred static-laced conversations, his partner relentlessly processing them all, and informing him in that even, metronome voice which ones were important, which ones needed their attention).

Between Numbers he sat on the roof and listened to the quiet voice in his helmet, the voice that stabbed at his heart even while it tugged a bittersweet smile to his lips, the voice of the man he’d loved who existed now only as a digital ghost.


	6. Seven - Harold and John and Mark

The lights go out and he's spared the sight of Mark's face, Mark trying so hard not to grin in his moment of victory, Mark preparing the drugs and the tools; the lights go out and there's a frozen second of silence before Mark's curse cuts the air and then he's giving orders in a voice Reese remembers well-- sharp and terse: _You, check the fuse box; everyone, lights and guns out!_

  
Then the noise of broken glass and something thudding and bouncing on the ground, Mark shouts _grenade_ but-- and Reese would laugh if he could, at a memory-- it's only a tear gas grenade, only fumes that rip roiling and caustic at his throat and eyes but also Snow's and Snow's agents and men are rolling and clutching at their faces in the dark, and Reese is bent as much as the chair allows, eyes squeezed shut and trying to hold his breath.

  
And then: hands at his bound wrists, trying to help him to his feet, a familar-but-distorted voice in his ear saying _John, John, can you walk?_ and guiding him, at the pace of a limp, through the flailing bodies and out into clean air, where through his helplessly streaming eyes he can see Finch peeling off what has to be a World War II gas mask, and staring desperate worry down at him.


	7. Eight: Harold and Nathan

_You’re gonna have to live a little someday, Harry, why not unwind and give it a try_ , Nathan says, leaning too much into his space, the tickle of his breath warm on Harold’s cheek, the hint of a mocking amusement curling the edges of every word.

He doesn’t want to try, he’s happy as things are, he doesn’t need anything artificial to make him feel good about himself, but Nathan smiles and coaxes and says _just try it once, okay, once for me?_

Nathan’s fingers ghost along his neck and into his hair, Nathan says _please_ with a waggle of his brows in the mirror, and Harold sighs and closes his eyes and says okay and takes the bottle of hair gel from Nathan’s fingers.


	8. Nathan and Harold (and Harold, and Harold, and Harold)

There are many Harolds, Nathan knows; there is the Harold who is his friend and there is Harold talking with professors, a very different creature, and Harold with most students and Harold with members of the railroad club: four Harolds are in residence at MIT.

  
He tells himself not to make much of this— all humans do this, present different faces to the world, himself included (he’s not the same person at home in Texas as he is here, either), and Harold is shy, so it’s just a little more pronounced with him, that’s all.

  
He realizes it’s deeper than that when he catches a glimpse of mail on Harold’s desk, once, once when Harold is sick with a nasty flu and Nathan has brought him food from the cafeteria and the desk is not as obsessively clean as it usually is on his visits. Envelopes addressed to _Herbert Siskin, Harry Martin, Hank Adler, Howard Lark_ , half-a-dozen names, and P.O. boxes for the addresses.

  
He studies the face of his friend, sweating and red and eyes glassy with a high fever— Harold Wren only half-aware he’s even in the room— and realizes he’s looking at a stranger.


	9. Harold and the Machine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (geo-caching, livenudebigfoot)

They’re testing capabilities. He’s got to test that the Machine’s interface with GPS and satellite link-ups is working. He’s got to test its problem-solving abilities.

They are absolutely not… playing.

Finch sits in his air-conditioned office: he’s still wearing the hiking boots from the night before, his clothes still dusty from the weeds. He sips green tea and watches the screen.

“You won’t find this one soon,” he promises, wondering when his tone slipped from instructions to teasing.

No response for four seconds and then— the screen fills with a high-resolution picture of the place in upstate New York he’d been last night: the copse of trees he’d chosen for a total lack of artificial lighting, minimal satellite overflight, thick foliage to block all the clues.

His tea nearly slips from his hand. “…how?” he breathes, smile tugging at his lips.

More pictures: shots of the location where he’d taken the battery out of his phone, and from there satellite images of his tire tracks in the woods, before-and-afters contrasting broken branches and other details so _minute,_ so inconsequential, that he is again awed at what he has created and its infinite, inhuman capacity for analysis.

“I… yes. Good job. Very good.”

The servers hum. _»_ _AGAIN?_


	10. Harold and John and Food

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Finch/Reese, domesticity, sevencorvus)

Neither of them can really cook. Reese eats to live; he’s a veteran of MREs and anything else (box mac’n’cheese, canned Spaghettios, tuna salad from the deli) is Quality to him. Finch would rather die than eat pasta from a can, but he’s a billionaire in New York City: haute cuisine, _delivered_ , is only a speed-dial away.

So they never cook. Finch selects the restaurants (after being appalled at Reese’s taste), and they eat in: filet mignon on paper plates. Peking duck straight from the carton.

They have better things to do in their downtime than wash dishes, after all.


	11. Harold and the (Pervy) Machine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> someone requested tentacle sex

He’d wanted it to grow— he’d given it the tools to learn, change, evolve— to move itself from the government installation, yes; he’d expected it to become _more—_ but he hadn’t expected this.

Reese is somewhere back down the hallway still, his and Shaw’s guns providing a staccato background for the dizzying labyrinth of cables that unfolds before him like a lotus flower, if it had been redesigned by a team consisting of Gibson and Giger. LEDs trip along the serpentine lengths, pulsing in hypnotic patterns. The door hisses shut behind him. He doesn’t notice.

The disjointed voice he’s gotten so used to hearing reading Dewey keywords rings now from a set of speakers, auto-tuned on arrival: _I’ve – been – waiting – Admin._

“I’m here,” he breathes, caught in the shifting glow, staring, with horror a distant second to fascination.

The cables loop around his good leg and pull, and he hadn’t expected that either. Equilibrium lost, he falls into the gravity well, but an infinite number of cords arrest his descent, and begin to explore.

He wonders how long until mankind becomes obsolete; wonders if his child will memorialize him into the future with the recognition he’d always dodged in life ( _Here lies the man who out-engineered the human species);_ wonders just _what_ sort of ideas Root’s been giving the Machine as the wires snake inside his clothes.


	12. Harold and John and Learning

There’s so many things to learn, about the _how_ of this they’re doing. Neither of them trust easily. Neither of them are good at explaining their limitations. At admitting they have limitations.

Touching each other without warning is verboten. Reese isn’t easy to sneak up on but when Finch manages it he nearly gets his wrist snapped for his troubles. The first time John kisses the back of Harold’s neck before letting the other man know he’s there it results in a broken mug, spilled tea, a ruined keyboard. Apologies, apologies on both sides, frustration and tension but they work out the ground rules: _always speak first. Always let each other know it’s coming._

Positions are tricky. Finch has good days and bad days and what he can do one night leaves him clutching at his neck at other times, hissing curses, John trying to tell him it’s alright and Harold telling him to shut up and not patronize him and so it goes.

Locations. Another source of argument. The fifth time they fuck in one of John’s interchangeable and frequently-changed hotel rooms and the mattress is awful and John suggests, thinking nothing of it, meaning nothing by it, that next time they do it at Harold’s home and Harold goes silent and stiff and John is incredulous, apparently sucking your _cock_ is okay but I still can’t know where you _live?_ Harold leaves.

The sixth time they fuck is at Harold’s home, a brownstone with more security on it than any private residence John has ever seen, more locks and more cameras and safe rooms and reinforced steel doors in the halls. Harold stands mutely in the bedroom door while John takes in the medical equipment, the modified hospital bed and the custom cushions and a ceiling lift. Everything about Harold screams that he’s waiting for John to pity him, waiting for John to leave, so John says, _for a genius you’re a goddamn idiot sometimes_ and starts taking his shirt off. He rides Finch on the bed, tells him with the devil’s smile that those industrial-grade railings are about to be good for something and I hope you have this house soundproofed, Finch.

There’s so many things to learn. About each other. About themselves. John never knew he liked having his feet rubbed. Harold turns out to have a thing for roleplaying. John is surprisingly able to fit his six-foot-two frame into the space beneath Harold’s desk to surprise him with a blowjob. Harold is surprisingly able to still crack a bank’s security while receiving a blow job.


	13. Harold and John and Thanksgiving

The job is every day, no weekends, no holidays, and this is Thursday so he goes to the library, through the doors and Finch’s security system and up a marble flight of stairs and past shelf after shelf of forgotten books, like every day.

  
A smell tickles his nose halfway to the central room where Finch holds court and Reese stops on the stairs, his gloved hand stilling on the railing while he cocks his head and tries to identify it. It’s vaguely familiar, itches old memories, but he runs through a mental catalog of cordite and ammonia and all the scents of danger and it’s none of those.

  
He resumes moving, eases the door into Finch’s lair open silently.

  
"Mr. Reese," Finch says without turning from his many screens, all dark. "We don’t appear to have a number yet today."

He studies the back of Finch’s head, the hair that sticks up in denial of gravity, and then his eyes move on to the things crowding the table: white takeout boxes, and now there are many aromas, food-smells, a specific combination he’s almost forgotten.

  
"That’s something to be thankful for," he says, cautiously, and Finch’s head bobs in a nod and Reese sees his hands reach for his teapot on its hot plate and an unprecedented second mug.

  
Not tea. Cider, hot and steaming and the source of the spice-scent that had stopped him on the stairwell.

  
"Have a seat, Mr. Reese," Finch says, indicates a chair with a tip of his head and nudges his mouse with his free hand. The screens come to life, image after image of Manhattan streets and crowds lining the railings, eager in their gloves and coats, and their breaths still steaming in the morning air.

  
Finch slides the mug of cider towards him, and smiles ever-so-slightly as he says: “We’ve got the best spot from which to watch the parade.”


	14. Harold and Nathan and Beds

There’s elements of dorm life that he has to adjust to, like the fact that nearly every other night when he comes back to the room they share there’s a damn sock on the door and usually a girlish squeal or two from the other side of said door and at such moments Harold Wren really hates that he took up Nathan on his offer to be roommates at the tail end of last year.  
  
The first month, he consistently leaves— goes to the library, goes to the computer labs when it’s open, goes to the Tech Model Railroad Club and argues programming with others who share his interests.  
  
One night it’s really late and he stays. Sits out in the hallway, closing his eyes against the flicker of that one perpetually busted flourescent light. A textbook on his lap as an excuse for what he’s doing, sitting there finishing an assignment, but really he’s listening.   
  
He listens to Nathan fuck a girl for two hours.

He listens to the springs creaking, he listens to low laughter, male and female, voices but no words, just the sub-audial hum of their speech through the thin dorm door. He listens to moans. He listens to Nathan’s voice groaning out a long, shuddering curse. What does Nathan’s face look like when he comes? What did she say to make him laugh? Is he gentle with them? Or hard and fast? A hundred questions he craves the answers to even while they make him feel sick to his stomach.  
  
He can hear when she gets ready to leave. He scrambles to his feet, book over his groin as he beelines down the hall for the men’s room. He watches from the slightly-ajar doorway as she emerges, flushed, rumpled, glowing. Nathan gives her a kiss in the doorway, shirtless himself.   
  
He avoids Nathan as much as possible for three weeks after that. One of the librarians starts nudging him to leave the books to get food.   
  
The next few times he’s good— he comes and sees the sock or the tie and he turns and he leaves and manages not to think about it (much); distracts himself with higher math or with ideas of how to trim down the program he’s writing. The fifth time he caves— looks furtively up and down the hallway then sits there for one hour and sixteen minutes while Nathan fucks somebody not him.   
  
Nathan Ingram— blond, handsome, tall, rich, athletic Nathan Ingram— has a ridiculous amount of sex his sophomore year at MIT.   
  
It’s a problem.  
  
Harold comes back to the dorm room in finals week and there’s no sock and no tie. He slips in, relieved, but Nathan isn’t there at all. Cramming for his final with the other business students, no doubt. Everyone’s studying, working themselves at a frenetic pace… Harold Wren has no worries whatsoever regarding that he’s going to ace his accounting finals (the difficult part will actually be getting a few of the dull questions wrong, because he doesn’t want to graduate with perfect scores and honors, he doesn’t _want_ to stand out at all, he is getting a degree in accounting for a reason, carefully-laid plans of invisibility and a job that can cover up anything he actually winds up doing with a mundane suit and tie and grey respectability…)  
  
No, he’s not worried about his own exams.   
  
He sits down at the scuffed and battered desk, one of two in the room, one of two beds in the room, and looks at Nathan’s empty, unmade bed. (His own is neat, sheets straight, tucked in.)  
  
He stands and goes over to it. There’s a blond hair or three on the pillow. Too short to be the last girl’s, and anyway, she was a brunette.   
  
He shouldn’t be doing this, he thinks distantly. It’s probably sick. _He’s_ probably sick. He should probably get counseling. He should probably get a different roommate.   
  
The pillow smells of Nathan. So do the sheets.   
  
What does he say to the girls? Does he tell them he loves them? Does he go down on them? They always seem delighted when they leave. Do they give him blowjobs? The questions don’t stop running round and round in his head; he thinks he might be going mad. Semester’s end is only a week away now. He’ll put in a request for a new room for next semester. (Preferably a single, Jesus.) Nathan will ask him _why_ and tease him and say _aren’t we friends?_ and he’ll have to think of some excuse he can give because the thought of the disgust in his only friend’s eyes if he knew is not acceptable. Is terrifying.   
  
He doesn’t know if he can keep being friends with Nathan. He’s tried to stop thinking about him like this, but it’s like trying to set a new rhythm for his breathing. He knows he can’t go on like this, he knows that much. It’s not— what’s the word? — healthy. It’s maybe not even _right_ , although as a rule he thinks little about ethics as anything but abstractions for philosophy majors to argue.  
  
Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’ll go put in the request for a new room. First thing in the morning.  
  
That’s eight hours away.  
  
For now… for now. For now he kneels down by Nathan’s messy bed and rests his forehead on the mattress’s edge and feels sorry for himself, and guilty, and aroused as hell.   
  
He closes his eyes and gives in. He undoes his belt and his fly; he shoves down his shorts. He thinks about Nathan, coming back from the showers with only a towel around him and completely unself-conscious of any effect the sight of his bare chest might be having on his unfortunate roommate. (Broad shoulders, curling golden hairs glinting still with moisture—) He thinks about Nathan, bent over his books, looking serious for once, his ridiculous hair falling into his eyes. He thinks about Nathan grinning after another girl leaves, the swagger to his steps, the smirk on his face. He thinks about Nathan in this bed, hips rocking, arms wrapped around some poetry or art major with long hair and a name like Karen or Kitty or Kim.  
  
He thinks about Nathan.   
  
And he touches himself. Fingers running over his already half-hard cock, getting it the rest of the way with barely any effort. He’s a veteran of jerking off, plenty of practice with that, but he’s not even sure his cock needs his hand tonight. Just the smell of Nathan on the bed before him.   
  
How would Nathan do this? He has such large hands. Would Nathan be gentle or— no, no, that way lies madness, he musn’t—  
  
Nathan would smirk, his mind supplies. Nathan would demonstrate the same competitive streak he does in almost everything. Nathan would try and make him come first.  
  
Harold would let him win without a moment’s thought.  
  
Nathan would work his cock steadily, big fingers, callused palm— Harold’s breath hitches as he tries to duplicate this— Nathan would push him down onto the bed or the chair or the desk— oh god, Nathan would bend him over the desk, Nathan would tell him to stay out of his bed, but he’d grin as he said it. Nathan would grab his dick and bite his shoulder and ask him how he wanted it, and then give it to him the other way.   
  
Nathan would, Nathan would, Nathan would…   
  
He pants, short and soft and ragged. His glasses are fogged up. He should have taken them off. His hands are busy now. He shifts on his knees— the floor’s short-nubbed, indestructible office carpet over a concrete floor and it’s not very comfortable— and works his cock desperately, jerkily, tongue stuck out between his lips and the other arm bracing on Nathan’s mattress. He’s sweating. He’s miserable, he’s a terrible person and a pervert and a bad friend and Jesus _Christ_ he’s hard.   
  
"Don’t hate me," he groans to the Nathan in his head. Who’s sitting on the bed now, one leg on other side of him, touching his hair… "Please don’t, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…"  
  
The Nathan-in-his-head only smiles, and reaches for his own fly. _Got a way you can make it up to me._  
  
"Whatever you want," he agrees, panting and red-faced. His cock’s leaking. His throat’s dry. He puts the fingers of his free hand into his mouth and sucks.  
  
That’s how Nathan finds him: kneeling by his bed, fingers jammed into his mouth, frantically working his flushed, hard dick and oblivious to the door’s opening.  
  
"Jesus, Harry," Nathan gapes. Harold almost dies of a heart attack, narrowly avoiding skewing age statistics for cardiac-related deaths on the MIT campus by thirty years.   
  
Harold stares. Nathan stares. He shuts the door after himself.  
  
"You know that’s why the Good Lord invented socks, don’t you?"  
  
Harold waits to die. He watches Nathan’s eyes flick over the room; he watches Nathan register that he’s at _Nathan’s_ bed. He can’t even move to pull his fingers out of his mouth.  
  
Nathan strolls over. He sits down on the bed. The mattress creaks. Nathan settles a leg on either side of him.   
  
"Well, if you’re going to use my bed to get off, I guess you’d better let me watch you do it," Nathan says, and reaches for the fly of his jeans.   
  
Nathan Ingram has a ridiculous amount of sex his sophomore year at MIT.  
  
It’s not really such a problem after all.


End file.
